legal and political challenges of governing the environment and climate change ruling nature

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The environment has not always been protected by law. It was not until the middle of the 20th century that ‘the environment’ came to be understood as an entity in need of special care, and the law-politics duo firmly fixed its focus on this issue. In this book Wickham and Goodie tell the story of how law and politics first came upon the environment as an object in need of special attention. They outline the unlikely intersection of aesthetics and science that made ‘the environment’ into the matter of great concern it is today. The book describes the way private common-law strategies and public-law legislative strategies have approached the task of protecting the environment, and explore the greatest environmental challenge to have so far confronted environmental law and politics; the threat of global climate change. The book offers descriptions of many of the strategies being deployed to meet this challenge and present some troubling assessments of them. The book will be of great interest to students, teachers, and researchers of environmental law, socio-legal studies, environmental studies, and political theory.

This book exposes the dysfunction of environmental law and offers a transformative approach based on the public trust doctrine. An ancient and enduring principle, the public trust doctrine empowers citizens to protect their inalienable property rights to crucial resources. This book shows how a trust principle can apply from the local to global level to protect the planet.

A deepening understanding of the importance of climate change has caused a recent and rapid increase in the number of climate change or climate-related laws. Trends in Climate Change Legislation offers an astute analysis of the political, institutional and economic factors that have motivated this surge, placing it into context.

A vast and diverse body of EU law addresses an enormous range of environmental matters. This book examines a number of areas of substantive EU environmental law, focusing on the striking preoccupation of EU environmental law with the structure of decision-making. Now in its second edition, the book highlights the observation that environmental protection and environmental decision-making depend intimately both on detailed, specialized information about the physical state of the world, and on political judgments about values and priorities. It also explores the elaborate mechanisms that attempt to bring these diverse decision-making resources into EU environmental law, in areas including industrial pollution, chemicals regulation, environmental assessment, and climate change. (Series: Modern Studies in European Law - Vol. 43) [Subject: EU Law, Environmental Law, Energy Law]

A systematic examination by the best writers in a variety of fields working on issues of how climate change affects society, and how social, economic, and political systems can, do, and should respond.

Existing climate change governance regimes in the US and the EU contain complex mixtures of regulatory, market, voluntary, and research-based strategies. The EU has adopted an approach to climate change that is based on mandatory greenhouse gas emission reductions; it is grounded in 'hard' law measures and accompanied by 'soft' law measures at the regional and Member State level. In contrast, until recently, the US federal government has carefully avoided mandatory emission reduction obligations and focused instead on employing a variety of 'soft' measures to encourage - rather than mandate - greenhouse gas emission reductions in an economically sound, market-driven manner. These macro level differences are critical yet they mask equally important transatlantic policy convergences. The US and the EU are pivotal players in the development of the international climate change regime. How these two entities structure climate change laws and policies profoundly influences the shape and success of climate change laws and policies at multiple levels of governance. This book suggests that the overall structures and processes of climate change law and policy-making in the US and the EU are intricately linked to international policy-making and, thus, the long-term success of global efforts to address climate change. Accordingly, the book analyses the content and process of climate change law and policy-making in the US and the EU to reveal policy convergences and divergences, and to examine how these convergences and divergences impact the ability of the global community to structure a sustainable, effective and equitable long-term climate strategy.

This comprehensive overview of US environmental regulation?from the inception of the EPA through the current Bush administration?goes beyond traditional texts to consider alternatives to the existing regulatory regime, as well as the challenges posed by the global nature of environmental issues.Thoughtful and even-handed, Governing the Environment covers the full range of topics relevant to our understanding of current environmental policy. Clear, concise chapters move from the context of environmental policy to regulatory design, reform efforts, and notable private-sector innovations.In the process, the author argues that we?ve taken conventional environmental regulation as far as we can go?that we need to look for alternative ways of governing the environment, involving corporations that have expertise in the areas of technology, products, and markets. But, he cautions, there must be a careful integration of private-sector initiatives and public regulation.A notable feature of the text is an examination of the difficulties inherent in managing global environmental problems. Exploring recent efforts toward global environmental governance in the face of competing economic demands, the final section considers the ways in which a system of governance might compensate for the lack of effective international regulatory institutions.Marc Allen Eisner is Henry Merritt Wriston Chair of Public Policy in the Government Department at Wesleyan University. His publications include Antitrust and the Triumph of Economics and Contemporary Regulatory Policy, 2nd Edition.Contents: Environmental Protection and Governance: An Introduction. Environmental Policy and Politics. A Primer on Environmental Protection. The Environmental Policy Subsystem. The Evolution of Regulatory Design and Reform. Regulatory Design and Performance. Regulatory Reform or Reversal. Reinventing Regulation: Flexibility in an Iron Cage. Voluntarism and the End of Reform. The Emerging System of Green Governance. From Greed to Green: Corporate Environmentalism and Management. Green by Association: Code- and Standards-Based Self-Regulation. Public-Private Hybrids and Environmental Governance. Regulating the Global Commons from the Bottom Up. Beyond the Tragedy of the Global Commons. From Montreal to Kyoto. Sustainable Development: Managing the Unmanageable. Conclusion. Green Governance and the Future of Environmental Protection.

This book explores the significance of human behaviour to understanding the causes and impacts of changing climates and to assessing varied ways of responding to such changes. So far the discipline that has represented and modelled such human behaviour is economics. By contrast Climate Change and Society tries to place the ?social? at the heart of both the analysis of climates and of the assessment of alternative futures. It demonstrates the importance of social practices organised into systems. In the fateful twentieth century various interlocking high carbon systems were established. This sedimented high carbon social practices, engendering huge population growth, increasing greenhouse gas emissions and the potentially declining availability of oil that made this world go round. Especially important in stabilising this pattern was the ?carbon military-industrial complex? around the world. The book goes on to examine how in this new century it is systems that have to change, to move from growing high carbon systems to those that are low carbon. Many suggestions are made as to how to innovate such low carbon systems. It is shown that such a transition has to happen fast so as to create positive feedbacks of each low carbon system upon each other. Various scenarios are elaborated of differing futures for the middle of this century, futures that all contain significant costs for the scale, extent and richness of social life. Climate Change and Society thus attempts to replace economics with sociology as the dominant discipline in climate change analysis. Sociology has spent much time examining the nature of modern societies, of modernity, but mostly failed to analyse the carbon resource base of such societies. This book seeks to remedy that failing. It should appeal to teachers and students in sociology, economics, environmental studies, geography, planning, politics and science studies, as well as to the public concerned with the long term future of carbon and society.

The second edition of this Handbook contains more than 30 new and original articles as well six essential updates by leading scholars of global environmental politics. This landmark book maps the latest theoretical and empirical research in this energetic and growing field. Captured here are the pioneering and lively debates over concerns for the health of the planet and how they might best be addressed. The introduction explores the intellectual trends and evolving parameters in the field of global environmental politics. It makes a case for an expansive definition of the field, one that embraces an interdisciplinary literature on the connections between global politics and environmental change. The remaining chapters are divided into four broad themes – states and cooperation; global governance; the political economy of governance; and knowledge and ethics – with each section covering key emerging issues. In-depth explorations are given to topics such as climate change, multinational corporations, international agreements and UN organizations, regulations and business standards, trade and international finance, multilevel and transnational governance, and ecological citizenship. Handbook of Global Environmental Politics, Second Edition is a comprehensive review of the field and offers cutting-edge ideas for further research. As such, scholars, students and policymakers will find themselves looking to it for many years to come.

China’s huge environmental challenges are significant for us all. They affect not only the health and well-being of China but the very future of the planet. In this trailblazing book, noted China specialist and environmentalist Judith Shapiro investigates China’s struggle to achieve sustainable development against a backdrop of acute rural poverty and soaring middle class consumption. Using five core analytical concepts to explore the complexities of this struggle - the implications of globalization, the challenges of governance; contested national identity, the evolution of civil society and problems of environmental justice and equity - Shapiro poses a number of pressing questions: Do the Chinese people have the right to the higher living standards enjoyed in the developed world? Are China's environmental problems so severe that they may shake the government's stability, legitimacy and control? To what extent are China’s environmental problems due to patterns of Western consumption? And in a world of increasing limits on resources and pollution "sinks," is it even possible to build an equitable system in which people enjoy equal access to resources without taking them from successive generations, from the poor, or from other species? China and the planet are at a pivotal moment; the path towards a more sustainable development model is still open. But - as Shapiro persuasively argues - making this choice will require humility, creativity, and a rejection of business as usual. The window of opportunity will not be open much longer. Chapter 1 - 'The Big Picture' - is available online.